All a-twitter about Web 2.0: what does it offer libraries?(INTERNET EXPRESS)(Website overview)(Column).

Over the last year or two, the nagging message has gotten louder and more persistent: We Luddite librarians had better get hip to Web 2.0 and fast or risk losing our relevance and our customers. Some of us are still smarting over having to adapt so quickly to the information revolution wrought by the World Wide Web. (Was that only 13 years ago?) Gradually, we have enmeshed the Web and our work. Personally, I've grown so dependent on the Web that when the reference desk Internet connection goes down, I feel bereft, largely unable to answer a question or even find a book in the library.

But now even our online searching skills are not enough. Now, we must divert time and energy to Web 2.0, a term generally understood to encompass Web sites that host or allow the production of user-generated Web content (including the ability to add subject tags and comments to the published content of others), as well as social networking, which facilitates online connections between people. Such is our professionwide sense of privation that this unexpected demand almost seems unfair and may make us defensive. How can we pay attention to all this new online stuff when we barely have the resources to provide our traditional library services?

And don't get me started on the goofy names in Web 2.0: meebo, Digg, Twitter, del.icio.us, Squidoo. Try convincing your boss of the value of a library swicki [http://swicki.eurekster.com]. You're likely to get laughed right out of the administrative suite. How can librarians get any respect for working with these ridiculous-sounding tools?

Not only that, but user-generated content, almost by definition, lacks authority. In the Web 2.0 world, one person's ideas are as good as another's, and information gatekeepers seem irrelevant. It's a lack of control that drives teachers, librarians, and corporate IT professionals crazy. In his book The Cult of the Amateur: How Today's Internet Is Killing Our Culture (Currency, 2007. ISBN: 038 5520808), Silicon Valley entrepreneur Andrew Keen captures this viewpoint when he complains that the new Internet willfully blurs the line between fact and opinion and values popularity over expertise. As a result, says Keen, we are faced with a formless, cacophonous information environment in which "ignorance meets egoism meets bad taste meets mob rule."

Still, useful tools for information professionals do exist among the burgeoning applications of Web 2.0. We may yet bend some of these to our purposes, just as we did with the original World Wide Web. We may already use some without realizing it. For example, Amazon.com, with its customer-written book reviews, could be considered to have pioneered Web 2.0 long before the term existed.

How Do They Do It? Volume!

There are a ton of Web 2.0 services out there with more being introduced all the time. It's the tech boom of the late '90s all over again, this time with audience participation. Eventually, the market will choose its standards and a winnowing will occur. This is especially true because Web 2.0 applications depend on a critical mass of participation for success. For example, if you get a cold, you might want to check out "Who Is Sick?" [http://whoissick.org/sickness], a mashup that features a map displaying the symptoms of your neighbors and a way to report your own. It is supposed to show when an epidemic is afoot and perhaps offer warnings to take special precautions against a disease. This service is only accurate, however, when enough people log in to report their illnesses.

del.icio.us http://del.icio.us

Volume is the key to the success of this service, which allows users to store their Web bookmarks and to tag them according to subject. I have used del.icio.us intensely for a year-and-a-half for this purpose alone. That way I always have my important sites with me, at work or at home, in searchable format. The tremendous popularity of this application enables it to be used as a search engine, not of the whole Web, but of those items of the moment that a lots of people have found important. For instance, when I wanted to find a free "avatar generator," an online program to make a little cartoon of myself to use in Web 2.0 applications, I searched del.icio.us and found several candidates.

The Many Faces of Web 2.0

Since the term Web 2.0 encompasses such a variety of applications, let's break them down into their general functions. Freelance corporate public relations consultant Kami Huyse, on her blog Communication Overtones [http://overtonecomm.blogspot.com/2007/04/join -network-of-networks.html], divides Web 2.0 applications, which she calls "Social Media" into seven major categories:

* Publishing platforms, such as blogs and podcasts

* Social networking sites, such as MySpace [http://myspace.com] and Facebook [http://www.facebook.com]

* Democratized content networks, such as Digg [http://digg.com] and Wikipedia [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page], that allow users to add, change, or rate content

* Virtual networking platforms, such as Second Life [http://secondlife.com]

* Information aggregators, such as Memeorandum [http://www.memeorandum.com], which automatically collect headlines on a single general topic from a collection of sources (in this case, politics)

* Edited social news platforms sites, such as Spin Thicket [http://www.spinthicket.com], that post news stories referred by users

* Content distribution sites that allow users to create or collect and distribute content, such as del.icio.us [http://del.icio.us] or Scrapblog [http://www.scrapblog.com]

Not all these types of sites will serve the library as an organization. For example, social news platforms are a great way to catch the latest weird news and celebrity gossip, but not as good for boosting work productivity. Librarians could find blogs and podcasts more useful for getting out their message. The San Marino Public Library has kept a What's New? blog of press releases since 2003 [http://sanmarinopl.blogspot.com] from Google's Blogger [http://www.blogger.com]. I love the blog format because it is easy to cut and paste text into it, and now, with the ability to add tags, is also searchable. Best of all, it cleans up after itself, archiving old material in clickable chronological order.

Another Web 2.0 application we love is Flickr [http://www.flickr.com], owned by Yahoo!. At the moment, Flickr seems to have become the de facto standard application for photo-blogging. It offers a limited free service, but our library has purchased a more advanced subscription. For $25 per year, Flicker hosts all our library photos in neat collections and sets. It offers easy uploading and permanent URLs, even for services such as online slideshows. We have used the slideshow feature to showcase the ongoing construction of our new library: http://www.flickr.com/photos/sanmarinopl/sets/72157600291852063/show.

What Works?

Look for Web 2.0 applications that actually make your life easier, rather than just trying to keep up with technological change for its own sake. In addition to the aforementioned Flickr, del.icio.us, and Blogger, here is a tiny sampling of some Web 2.0 services that some libraries have found useful.

LibraryThing http://www.librarything.com

Catalogers can unite with this social cataloging application developed in 2005 by Tim Spaulding. What could be better than the ability to catalog personal collections or subcollections with MARC authority records? Users can find suggestions for "read alikes" as well as "find people with eerily similar tastes."

Facebook http://www.facebook.com

Along with MySpace.com, Facebook is currently the best way to make contact with youthful prospective patrons. Since it serves mostly college students, Facebook should particularly help academic librarians. Unfortunately, it does not permit organizations to set up accounts. Librarians must join as individuals, not as part of a reference team.

Bloglines http://www.bloglines.com

This is one of many free RSS feed readers. If you know what an RSS feed reader is, then you probably already know how useful they can be. If not, why not set up an account on Bloglines and start pulling in some library technology feeds such as Jenny Levine's blog The Shifted Librarian [http://www.theshiftedlibrarian.com]? Or just pull in the headlines from your favorite news sources, such as The New York Times. It's so much easier than having them clutter your email inbox.

Podcasting Toolbox: 70+ Podcasting Tools and Resources http://mashable.com/2007/07/04/podcasting-toolbox

Some libraries have found it useful to record audio presentations and make them available for download over the Web as podcasts. Here is a collection of podcasting tools.

15 Productive Uses for a Wiki http://webworkerdaily.com/2007/07/13/1 5-productive-uses-for-a-wiki

Web Worker Daily, a blog for home-based computer workers, describes how wikis can help on the job and offers links to several wiki hosting services.

Explore the Basics

Even if we don't love the idea of writing blogs or having patrons as online "friends," we still owe it to ourselves to try out a few Web 2.0 services. Even glancing contact with these applications should at least help us seem coolly knowledgeable when our patrons ask us about them.

Learning 2.0 http://plcmcl2-things.blogspot.com

Helene Blowers, technology director at the Public Library of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County in North Carolina, devised this series of exercises to help her staff learn how to use a variety of Web 2.0 applications. She offered her staff prizes for those who completed all the tasks.

43 Things I Might Want To Do This Year http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0FWE/is_2_10/ai_n16133338

Stephen Abram's article appeared in the February 2006 issue of Information Outlook. He suggests (not quite 43) Web 2.0 technologies that librarians should explore to be prepared for the future.

Keep Up With What's Next

Oy vey. If those were the basics, how are we ever going to keep abreast of the complex technologies flying at us every day? Try these helpful resources.

Jane's E-Learning Pick of the Day http://janeknight.typepad.com/pick

Jane Hart, head of Britain's Centre for Learning and Performance Technologies, strives to get Web 2.0 know-how out to educators (which can be construed to include librarians). Pick up her RSS feed to get her daily choice of elearning items of interest. Search her directory of more than 1,500 annotated links to social networking and other Webbased tools: http://www.c4lpt.co.uk/Directory.

Stephen's Lighthouse http://stephenslighthouse.sirsidynix.com

Stephen Abram, vice president of innovation at SirsiDynix, is the prophet of library technology. Read his entertaining blog as he reads the tea leaves of current market trends and calls on us to repent our inertia and implement improved customer service using emerging Web applications. Better yet, get his RSS feed, maybe on your cell phone.

SEOmoz's Web2.0 Awards http://www.seomoz.org/web2.0

In May 2007, Web branding company SEO chose the top three Web 2.0 applications in more than 40 categories, including mashups, travel, and professional networking. This site lists a fraction of what is available, but what is here is probably the most popular and thus the most useful. Check out the 2006 selection, too: http://www.seomoz.org/web2.0/index/2006.

Webware: Cool Web Apps for Everyone http://www.webware.com

CNET hosts this review blog for Web 2.0 applications. Check out its list of the 100 best online services for the year 2007, "The Webware 100": http://www.webware.com/html/ww/100.html.

Friends: Social Networking Sites for Engaged Library Services http://onlinesocialnetworks.blogspot.com

Use your RSS aggregator to subscribe to Iowa State University science and technology librarian Gerry McKiernan's blog that delivers the news most relevant to librarians interested in using Web 2.0 applications to reach their patrons.

Tomorrowland

In reviewing David Egerton's book The Shock of the Old (Oxford, 2006, ISBN: 0195322835), Steven Shapin writes that humans tend to exaggerate the impact of dramatic new technologies. "We are wrong to associate technology solely with invention ... we should think of it, rather, as evolving through use" ("What Else Is New?" New Yorker, vol. 83, no. 12, May 14, 2007, pp. 144-148).

According to this theory, we don't have to feel guilty about not keeping up with every Web development. We can take our time, try things out, and judge for ourselves what is useful.

And take pride in yourself for making that effort, according to John N. Berry III, editor-at-large at Library Journal. In fact, "Libraries are actually one of the few public sector institutions or agencies responding fully to the pressure of change" (Library Journal, April 15, 2007, p. 10).

So put that on your blog and smoke it.

Virtual World Reference Desks

Perhaps the ultimate submersion to Web 2.0 would be to establish an outpost in a virtual world such as Second Life [http://secondlife.com]. Kelly Czarnecki, technology education librarian for teens and youth at the Public Library of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County in North Carolina, has taken this challenge and set up a library in Teen Second Life [http://teen.secondlife.com].

At first glance, this may seem like a worthy goal for all of us. After all, why not reach out to teens and others trying to fill their information needs in an imaginary world? Yet plenty of real-life obstacles could prevent most of us from following through.

First of all, there are the demands of entering the world itself. The Second Life software is huge and takes lots of processing power. To enter the world, you must assemble a cartoon representation of your character, or "avatar." You may try to make this look like yourself or take on a fanciful persona, such as an elf, an animal, or a bosomy babe. You must also choose a name.

Your character then flies around the world, interacting with other avatars. Of course, you have no idea who they really are. Still, their representations make them seem real enough. You talk to them by typing your words while your character mimes this action in the air.

There are people for whom the virtual life is absolutely compelling. Being able to control one's persona and to act anonymously seems to free some users to engage in behavior they never would attempt in the "meat world." In short, lots of those avatars spend lots of their time in sex and gambling.

Then, there are the libraries. In a Second Life "library," clicking on a "book" usually pulls up a Web page. That's right. You just spent a whole day making yourself, finding a library (which is always eerily empty), and opening a book, and what do you get? Something you could have Googled in about 5 seconds.

Any adults working in the separate world of Teen Second Life must undergo (and pay for) an FBI background check. Even so, they still have to put up with "griefers," anonymous players who try to sabotage the experience for everyone else.

The virtual world is like Las Vegas, an exotic space where people go to indulge fantasies, not to conduct research. Hey, what happens in SL, stays in SL. I discussed this recently with Robert Karatsu, assistant library director of the Rancho Cucamonga Public Library in California. His take on manning a real-time virtual reference desk? "If I were going to Second Life, I would gamble and have sex like everybody else. I wouldn't go there to work."

Irene E. McDermott

Reference Librarian/System Manager

San Marino Public Library

Irene E. McDermott has the dullest page on all of MySpace, which she rarely updates from her home in Pasadena, Calif.

Gale Document Number:A169755264